Posts Tagged ‘advisor’

Our guest this week is Paul Chato, CEO at Your Web Department™, the world’s first and only hosted website management system that lets people update and design their websites without programming. It’s hard enough to succeed in one career. Paul has succeeded in four different pursuits. See below…………

Jim Stewart, the custodian of this ProftPATH blog has given me some space here. I just hope he doesn’t regret it.

Management consulting is that strange business whereby if we only ran our companies better, more efficiently and with an attention to the obvious we wouldn’t need the service. Sure, there is the argument that having an outside opinion is a good thing but I tend to think we use that ‘outside opinion’ as a way to confirm long-held beliefs and then we use the assessment as a cudgel on the inefficiencies that we always knew existed. Some of us are blind to the obvious, but most are just insecure about doing anything about it. Maybe if we had better employees, or trusted them more we wouldn’t need management consultants.

But you know why having a relationship with a competent management consultant is a good thing? It gives you someone you can just plain talk to about stuff you can’t talk about to spouse or subordinates. It’s pretty lonely running an SMB and a good MC is vital to your mental health. Forget about the details about capital expenditures, or going over the P+L, sometimes you just need someone to talk to about the pressures and frustrations of running a business.

I think, as a trusted advisor, that’s the greatest role a management consultant can play. We’re only human.

More About Paul:

At first pursuing a potential career in nuclear physics, Paul chose, instead, to develop his creative skills. After graduating from Ryerson’s Radio Television Arts program he started Chato Art Ink, one of Toronto’s more successful independent design firms. He stopped designing to take up comedy, helping to form the now legendary Frantics Comedy Troupe, and will be forever remembered as Mr. Canoehead, “Canada’s aluminum-headed crime fighter.” Paul then joined the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation rising to the position of Head of TV Comedy. After considering a move to Los Angeles to take up a position as VP of Development at a major Hollywood studio, Paul instead chose to exercise his interest in computers. He started Electramedia and in the intervening years produced the hugely successful CD-ROM game Jewels of the Oracle, hundreds of corporate presentations, videos and Internet sites. In 1997 Electramedia switched its focus 100% to the Internet and most recently has become Your Web Department™.